I go to raves, I take very modest amounts of LSD (100 maybe 150 micrograms), and the whole experience turns into very spiritual session where I dance with my entire being and let myself disolve into the Great Void.
It has lasting effects that go way beyond the effects of the drug.
However I think it's complicated to derive generalisms like saying it's a drug for everyone and everybody should take it. It's definitely not for everybody.
I'm also not going to be a hypocrite and say that you shouldn't do it. What I'll go and say is that it's your journey to figure out what you are going to invite into your life. In any case, depending on what you believe, you aren't actually here to figure things out. You already did. You are here to remember.
In more secular terms, you are here to do the required work to understand yourself, your circumstances, stand on the shoulder of giants and study the great minds that came before you. That will give you the necessary foundational philosophy to withstand and understand these experiences, should you choose to go through them. This is the only way to acquire a foundational respect for these substances and these experiences.
Have I done this work? Have I achieved the required level of understanding to make heads and tails of these experiences? Not for a while at least. It was rough the first couple of times. Very violent and crude, like rushing naked through a sea of people while being completely sure that that night is the last night of your life (I wasn't actually naked, it just felt like that and that everyone was eventually going to merge with me and that I should feel ashamed of it).
But with time and with the necessary exposure to understand the basics of existencialism I think I managed to pin down a more gentle form of this experience that can help me remember how to lay myself bare to the goddess and just be there when I dance.
So I think I can extend this invitation to anyone that feels brave enough to lift the reins of existence and reality and expose yourself to the truth. That everything is a story about the end of the world. About the beginning. And about everything at once.
It's scary, it's blissful and it's totally worth it.
I read in a forum about psychedelics about a guy who had been carving up his whole arm while tripping on LSD. The response befuddled me and wasn't what I expected: "Classic newbie mistake", "Your own fault for tripping alone", and "You should put knifes and weapons away when you trip." It made me realize these people are like adopters of niche programming languages. To outsiders they tell everyone how great their language is and how you'll become 10x more productive switching to it. Only on bug trackers will you find out about lack of tooling support, stochastic compiler bugs, and bad api designs.
Bath Salts. If rabies was a medicine. LSD lets you keep your marbles, they just become more colorful and roll around for awhile. It is disassociative though in a way that pain can be experienced differently. Solitary is okay, but don't go into it alone with self-harm in your history.
Just be careful with metaphors. It's useful for conveying ideas, but it's easy to mistake the original idea by the substitution. Psychedelics are not programming languages. It doesn't matter if you or I write the same piece of code in gleam, they will work the same if the environment is the same. The same cannot be said by psychedelics.
I see it as an unfortunate byproduct of the war on drugs forcing advocates to become boosters beyond what they otherwise would as a means to counteract the many years of bad-faith negative press. It was especially prevalent (still is to a certain extent) for weed, though I think that's dying down a bit now that it's been decriminalized in a lot of places.
> I take very modest amounts of LSD (100 maybe 150 micrograms)
PSA: 100-150 micrograms of LSD is a medium to strong trip. For beginners its good to start low, perhaps 75 micrograms or lower.
Edit: Also testing your reaction psychedelics in more controlled and calmer settings is highly recommended before doing in it raves or other public places. But also note that the effects may vary significantly even in the same person at different times and settings.
It’s also worth noting that there isn’t exactly strong quality control on the product. There is a good chance what is labelled 150 micrograms is actually closer to 50 micrograms. Or it could really be 150…
>100-150 micrograms of LSD is a medium to strong trip
Did you get that from a government "risk prevention" website? 100 micrograms is a base, standard dose; There's a reason that that is the most common amount to a piece of blotter paper.
A medium trip would be something like 220(also a common dose), and "strong" can go anywhere from what, 500 to 1000?(1000 and above being commonly referred to as "heroic dose" and fairly rarely taken)
I do agree that a beginner might want to try sub-100 micrograms, but you rub up against the lower border of real perceptible effects around 50.
> ...you are here to do the required work to understand yourself, your circumstances, stand on the shoulder of giants and study the great minds that came before you.
Just to offer a counterpoint:
“I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different.” ― Kurt Vonnegut
The more I experience, the more I think maybe that's a pretty good point, too.
It's like the nihilist denying any meaning to the world. It's because they choose to see it that way even if they aren't aware of it.
If you choose to fart around, whatever that means, don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Since there's no salvation, farts are also meaningless, and at the same time totally meaningful given the circumstances.
I don't believe Vonnegut beleived that for a minute.
> Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you've got a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies-"God damn it, you've got to be kind."
I would go as far as to say most people should have a psychedelic experience at least once in their life. There's nothing like it. It's one of the great pleasures of being alive.
My experiences have been universally negative often very much so. I have given LSD a good go. It has led to intense hallucinations with very long lasting PTSD like consequences for me. I have done it under the guidance of "professionals" (as close as you can get in a world where these substances are completely unregulated). Even in very small doses I have experienced intense anxiety and general feelings of dread.
This isn't to discount your experience but rather a general warning: all drugs aren't for everyone. It's easy to take away from these threads that psychedelics are universally positive and that negative trips are generally the result of misuse.
Which isn't true. Before going into this doing some deep introspection about yourself and your abilities is really important. Use these drugs with extreme caution.
Totally. It's just that that realisation must come from within, because the experience changes the very perception of reality and the relationship between yourself and everything else. With the wrong circumstances what would otherwise be a blissful experience can turn into a nightmare and this gate is likely forever closed for this person. I'd never forgive myself if I had this happen to someone else because of ill advice given by me.
Had one once. It was not a pleasure at all. Best I can say is that it was interesting and that I did 'experience' interesting stuff. But that has no profound effect on me, since I consider it, like a dream, to have no basis in reality.
Generic statements like this are dangerous since different people may respond VERY differently to the same substance. This can depend on long term traits like personality or short term like the current state of mind. People reading such statements might think there's no way it can go wrong. If it isn't a profound experience, they might also think there's something wrong with them, which isn't the case.
The people that could benefit the most are the least likely to ever try it. There are some people so blind to their own flaws they’d simply shatter under the influence of psychedelics.
I think this notion that one must engage in philosophical study or appreciate "the goddess" to survive, enjoy and appreciate psychedelics is ridiculous.
There is no special 'truth' in LSD, certainly no truths outside the self - while you can learn some things about your internal experience from it, it also repeatedly provokes in its users a false sense of the profound. People experience 'realisations' which are pure nonsense when recalled or examined later.
It makes your brain go haywire in all sorts of fun and interesting ways. But if you're looking for the meaning of life in there you're doing it wrong, and I dread to think what you might find.
Joscha Bach summed this up in a very succint way in an interview once. Paraphrasing him, psychedelics tend to result in overfitting. Suddenly, everything is about them. Leary and McKenna are actually good publicly known examples. And the phenomenon of "I have found the soltuion" without being able to actually name it, is also pretty common.
It will strip the user of it's self obsessed focus on me, my wants & needs, and allow you to see life from a very far distance.
Therefore for some people it will show them their "truth", its not that lsd or mushrooms contain the truth.
This goes from very practical truths in where you see patterns of yourself that are not very useful but even more important you will see & feel the impermanence of your being & experience the world in it's totality making your impermanence a joyful feeling of being part of the world instead of being seperated from it. This is why in some studies people fear death less.
> I think this notion that one must engage in philosophical study or appreciate "the goddess" to survive, enjoy and appreciate psychedelics is ridiculous.
Cool. I think it's very important. I'll think really hard about philosophy when on drugs, you go do your thing ;)
> There is no special 'truth' in LSD, certainly no truths outside the self
What is the "outside of the self"? Isn't that smuggling in the assumption that there is an essential separation of the self and the rest of the world? What if everything is world? And what if everything is self? Does it make any difference?
> while you can learn some things about your internal experience from it, it also repeatedly provokes in its users a false sense of the profound
What is the correct sense of the profound and who is going to be the gatekeepers of the profound?
> People experience 'realisations' which are pure nonsense when recalled or examined later.
I have all my notes and they still make a lot of sense to me so I don't think this argument hold by experience.
> But if you're looking for the meaning of life in there you're doing it wrong, and I dread to think what you might find.
Is there a meaning to life to be found? I always thought the meaning of life is something you never stop pursuing, every day all the time. So please, tell me the right ways so I don't dread you. I'm being sarcastic in the same proportion you are being arrogant.
Ah and thanks for proving my point about the necessity of philosophy.
> I go to raves, I take very modest amounts of LSD (100 maybe 150 micrograms), and the whole experience turns into very spiritual session where I dance with my entire being and let myself disolve into the Great Void.
Cool. And good for you, but this has honestly ruined 'raves' for me.
I'm a huge fan of different types of electronic music and really, really enjoy it. The music itself is a spiritual experience and allows me to 'disolve into the Great Void'. But these days when I go to a festival or something, I'm surrounded by people I can't share this feeling/experience with, since everyone seems to be on some type of drug and either in their own world (X, LSD, etc) or think the world is in them (coke).
I recently prematurely left an artist I was really looking forward to because of exactly this. It was incredibly disappointing, though not surprising.
It's really hard to maintain a healthy state of mind when there is a dude overdosing with several paramedics trying to stabilise him. I still remember that time and it hurts me every time I think about it.
But there are smaller raves, with 50-500 people, where I think this feeling is maintained.
I'd maybe recommend avoiding what we call here "commercial raves" and go to "pvt's", private raves, which are not private, just with more modest economic goals.
Some of the best writing on the uses of LSD come from Alan watts. In his early life he said "it was impossible to bottle mysticism" and yet on dropping acid the first time felt like "they have completely bottled mysticism!".
But then he noticed that the results really depend on who is taking it and what their world view is. If you do not have any inclination towards that mystic space, you will not get the ego death. It is as Eckhart Tolle said "just your senses turned up to 11", that is if there is nothing else you can get out of it.
As Douglas Rushkoff said "If you give tech bros a hit of psychedelics, all you get is tech bros on psychedelics." There is no higher sense achieved.
> "If you give tech bros a hit of psychedelics, all you get is tech bros on psychedelics."
This is an amazing line. I must admit: the first time I tried LSD I had some code open on my laptop. Before the trip I was curious what programming on LSD would be like, so at some point dutifully I sat down in front of my editor. I was immediately utterly transfixed by the colours of the text cursor as it pulsed. Then I lost myself watching hover states as I moved the mouse around. Needless to say, I didn’t get any programming done.
I remember thinking how strange and hilarious it was that, while sober, I care at all about programming. It all seemed so hollow.
A lot more happened on the trip - the whole thing was incredibly profound and insightful. But all these years later, I still have a crystal clear image of that pulsing cursor etched in my memory.
It's because meaning isn't essential to the universe, but derived from human experience. The universe needs us just as much as we need the universe. Actually this separation is an artifact of reductionism we have to let go.
In any case, this is why I think philosophy is the required work to be done so that we can invite spiritualism and mysticism into our lives and potentially experience them with these reality altering drugs.
> If you do not have any inclination towards that mystic space, you will not get the ego death
I am as agnostic-atheist as they come and would go as far as to say I find mysticism offensive to good sense. But I've experienced the ego death parts of LSD, and consider I have come to know myself more through it. I don't think it reveals some fundamental truth outside myself so much as being simply a phenomenon of the action of psychedelics on my brain.
Frankly I think this idea that you have to be studied in philosophy or open to mystic woo-y nonsense to fully appreciate or even fully experience psychedelics is hilarious and self-aggrandising.
Would you say the following are (individually taken) red flags for trying it:
* being terrified of letting loose (even with something common in the local culture, for example alcohol)
* having zero belief in the mysticism
> being terrified of letting loose (even with something common in the local culture, for example alcohol)
In that case, I would suggest working a bit on that first. Meditation can help, but "terrified" sounds strong enough that trying out therapy if available may be worthwhile.
Regarding substances, I found mushrooms to be easier than LSD, with a kind of warmth that softens the psychedelic experience (without taking anything away from it). The effects also don't last as long. A non-psychedelic which can allow one to face difficult emotions is MDMA. In some countries you can find MDMA based therapy. This could prepare someone to become more open to what psychedelics have to offer. (Edit: Also, all of these substances have effects that are not comparable to alcohol at all. Trying to understand the effects of psychedelics/empathogens based on experiences with alcohol is a category error.)
Based on my limited experience, I would roughly categorize the relation of these substances to the idea of control like this:
LSD: you might feel like there's some control, but you're actually the playball of the substance
Mushrooms: the substance draws you in some direction, and it's best to just lean into it, but it'll support you in doing so
MDMA: there's no need for control, things are okay the way they are
> having zero belief in the mysticism
That depends on what exactly this means.
Have some knowledge of "mysticism" or some eastern worldviews / philosophy, without taking it too seriously, would be a good basis IMO.
Actively rejecting any ideas related to mysticism while clinging tightly to a specific world view / metaphysics (and related beliefs like "I can only allow something if I understand / can explain it") may lead someone to have a really bad time on psychedelics.
---
Note that this isn't advice about whether to consume anything or what to consume, and experiences can vary widely between individuals, settings, dosages etc. (For both assumptions above, is possible to construct higly positive outcomes, where the substance helped overcome problems, opens one up, etc. and negative ones, horror trip, lasting trauma from the trip, ...) Having someone experienced present when doing something like this for the first time is highly recommended.
> being terrified of letting loose (even with something common in the local culture, for example alcohol)
Do you have good reason for this fear, like fantasies of hurting yourself or others? If so, yeah, you probably shouldn't ingest substances that can lower your inhibitions.
1. yes, that can be an issue, up to the point that you willingly or unwillingly "go on the trip" so to speak. i kinda prefer take more than less (not a brag - never done more than 2 tabs of acid at once before) because of that - it's a lot easier to ride it out when your conscious brain isn't making you self-conscious and anxious.
2. i never have and probably never will be a spiritual person. doesn't lessen the enjoyment or impact. i literally just think of it as a "reset button" - it makes you forget some previous anxieties, reframe others, let go of stuff that's dragging you down. it's not therapy but sometimes just shaking things up a bit gives you enough of a new perspective to really benefit you. or... you know, sometimes you just watch tv with your roommates for 3 hours. whatever.
I'm terrified of letting loose with alcohol because alcohol is a terrible drug. I've tried lots of different drugs and alcohol is in my opinion one of the worst. Culture pushes me to drink more (people buying drinks for me etc), and the more I drink the less concerned I am about moderation.
When I wake up the next day after taking it too far I'm riddled with anxiety and usually feeling sick, the whole day and maybe even the next day is ruined. And yes of course it's my responsibility to moderate my intake, it's just hard for me. The solution I've come up with is I try to never have more than 4-6 drinks in an evening.
I have experienced both myself and others saying and doing things while drunk that we never would have done or said sober. I have experienced myself and others being seriously injured solely due to alcohol.
There are other drugs that scare me the same way, particularly pills like benzos and such but I have never had a bad time with MDMA or LSD. It's much more of a "I love you man", "Everything is awesome" vibe. At least at the doses I use I'm completely lucid and in control, I'm just also having an amazing time.
Alcohol just makes me forget stuff, LSD and MDMA have given me some of the best memories of my life. I can't remember the last time I drank alcohol and woke up the next day thinking "last night was awesome". I've definitely had some good times with alcohol but the amount of bad times completely dwarfs them.
And again maybe this is all on me, maybe I just can't handle alcohol. But I'm definitely not alone.
If it wasn't for the social stigma and the fact that I generally don't want to associate with the people who supply drugs, I'd never drink alcohol again. I'd smoke weed and for special nights like festivals etc I'd use MDMA and maybe LSD.
The main thing to keep in mind if you want to try LSD is it lasts a long time. 8-12 hours, there is no off switch. Start with low doses, do half a tab or even a quarter tab. You don't need much, it's really powerful. A small dose will completely change your state of mind. If you like it, do more next time. Personally I don't really experience hallucinations, I'm completely aware, present and in control. Maybe patterns like wallpaper and leaves will seem to move and stuff like that, but aside from the dilated pupils you can't really tell I'm high. To me it's like seeing the world with new eyes, mundane things you pass by every day are suddenly interesting. Look at that beautiful tree. Look at your friends and loved ones, they're amazing. It makes me think differently, see things from a different perspective and be thankful for the things I take for granted in my daily life. It's awesome, I've done it maybe 20 times and I hope I get to experience it many more times. Just wish I could get it without buying from criminals.
I sometimes wonder - if the sensation of a "spiritual state" can be defined as a quantitative amount of some neurotransmitter in some circuit. That might be a sad day, though, for something that sounds so profound, to be reduced to numbers and probability....
The "out of body experience" ppl describe in near death always seemed to me to be a glitch of the brain's 3D perceptual space, i.e. a forced linear transform of 3D coordinates or something.
In more secular terms, you are here to do the required work to understand yourself, your circumstances, stand on the shoulder of giants and study the great minds that came before you
Is that what kids who are born into starvation and poverty think ? Or just white guys with money ?
In the extremes of the human experience everything is meaningless. I remember I last time I sat down on my sofa after a rave and I just cried thinking about the kids in Gaza and how much life is unfair.
I don't deserve so much, not more than these people that are starving, and yet I'm here. And I know that if I renounce everything I'll just be another starving person, albeit white.
So I enjoy my life and you won't be able to make me feel any worse than I already feel about it. But I dedicate myself to charity and to serving people whenever I can. It's important to use your privileges to care and serve. There is always someone that your abilities can help and renouncing them, renouncing your condition is a disservice to society.
Now answer me. How many people did your comment feed now? Which revolution did it fuel that will feed the masses?
Nah, if you think you want to do it, do it, and I think a lot of people would benefit from a little peer pressure of having a half dose. It's all social stigma, all of the fear is from bullshit stories of turning into a glass of orange juice: that shit doesn't happen. Take a half hit of acid and you'll wish you took more. Every person I've I introduced it to has agreed. It's not that big of a deal. You aren't going to wreck your brain. It's not something that will ALTER YOUR LIFE PERMANENTLY!!! It's a drug and you'll be fuckin fine.
It very much IS set and setting and the powers that be really want to fuck up the set. Try it. You won't regret it.
My point is, even though there is no unsafe dose of LSD, bad trips are real and can totally lock yourself out of it psychologically.
My advice has to be very careful in order not to incentivise unprepared people who would otherwise have a great trip. We have to be responsible, even if it'll only gonna negatively affect a very small percentage of them. Applied philosophy of care 100%
I think this is too dismissive of the transformative power of psychedelic drugs. They absolutely can alter your life permanently. They certainly altered mine. I think, in a positive way. But that power cuts both ways. I also know people who had harrowing, traumatic experiences and developed PTSD.
My advice to people who haven't tried it tends to be that if you're scared, you should abstain. Your presuppositions of what the experience will be, will in themselves shape the experience. If you expect a bad time, you're likely to get one.
There's also a group of people who are curious about using psychedelics to treat mental disorder. My advice to those people is to find a way to do it in a clinical setting. Psychedelics have enormous potential for effectively curing anxiety disorders, but it's not just a matter of taking the drugs. The experience must be guided by a psychologist who knows what the goal is. And then integrated and processed afterwards, also with expert help. Psychedelucs are not a treatment in and of themselves, more like an accelerant of psychotherapy. The therapy is still necessary, it's just that psychedelics allow you to do in a handful of sessions what could take years in a sober patient. As a case in point, I have a severe anxiety disorder myself, and my many self-initiated experiments with psychedelics haven't magically cured it. If combined with therapy, it might have. I'm still waiting for clinical practice to catch up, so I can have psychedelic therapy.
This is demonstrably false and dangerous to repeat.
Just because everyone in your sample size has been fine doesn't mean everyone will be or even that your group will continue to be. Contrary to simplistic thinking, the law does exist for a reason and these substances are also scheduled for reasons other than conspiracies around free thinking.
Please spend some time reading about drug induced psychosis and educate yourself of the risks.
At first I read graves instead of raves. Now that would also be an interesting session with some deep dissolutions & insights, although maybe disrespectful.
I've seen your post below about your bad trip. I fully respect your position, but that is not my experience. I realised I can't access things I find important through my reason. I'm just too dependent on my body for my mind to function, so I just followed what my body was telling me.
But I agree that you don't need to take drugs. That's why my advice wasn't a definitive one. It's an invitation for people to consider what they want in their lives.
You don’t need to take drugs to know things, but reason only covers a portion of what can be known. Reason doesn’t really help one understand the nature of experience itself. That’s a whole different kind of meta-factual knowing, an infinite subject that some people approach through meditation (and psychedelics too).
No, but LSD helped me see things that couldn't be learned from outside. For some reason, it helps me recall childhood memories better. Sure maybe there's some guided therapy session that could have done that, but LSD gives it to me for free, along with a whole lot of other stuff.
I don't know and honsetly I really don't care. What matters is what I do with it. It's really fun, I get a ton of physical exercise, I meet and talk to a lot of people, I help the organization with taking care of the garbage (I can't enjoy a rave fully if the land looks like a garbage dump).
I then get all my insights, because my mind never stops thinking about philosophy, and I write them down. Rinse and repeat.
It has profound effects in my life. Full disclaimer, I also exercise a lot, I have a fulfilling job in tech, I go to therapy, I dedicate myself to arts, I dedicate myself to my partner and my pets (which are almost like familiars for me).
Is it placebo? Is it my lifestyle? Is it the drugs?
I just apply non-interpretation to all these things that happen in my life and I go with it.
Ram Dass said that back in the 1960's when they were doing study of LSD they would try to randomize/double blind these tests but it was very funny to see. There were one where they had clergy involved and it basically went, one person would be like "I think it is doing something" and another would be wandering around going "I SEE GOD! I SEE GOD!". It was obvious who had what.
so hard to track these things down with google nowadays. Treats every word you add as an "or" like yahoo used to when google took their search market. The move from search engine to suggestion engine has been a disaster from my point of view. Hard to see how it would be more profitable.
> “I took five people and we locked ourselves in a building for three weeks and we took 400 micrograms of LSD every four hours. That is 2400 micrograms of LSD a day.… We finally were just drinking out of the bottle.… We were very high. What happened in those three weeks in that house, no one would ever believe, including us. And at the end of the three weeks, we walked out of the house and within a few days, we came down! It was a very frustrating experience, as if you came into the kingdom of heaven and you saw how it all was…and then you got cast out again.”
Ram Dass and his retelling of this experience contributed to my shift from psychedelics to established spiritual traditions. They had the territory mapped out thousands of years ago. Ram Dass ultimately settled as a Hindu where as I find myself drawn to Buddhism. Anatta maps nicely to experiences of ego death and I find that I can see all drugs as part of the conditioned world. If you rely on a physical substance of the conditioned world for access to the divine then you're not free yet.
If the goal is death, what's the point of living? shouldn't we be doing something completely different here than trying to find a way back? if we're going to end up back there no matter what, it seems a waste of life to spend it on that.
This was part of this difficulty in clinical trials for mdma iirc. Both researchers and participants were fairly reliably able to discern placebo, among some other issues
he also reported giving a guru heroic doses of LSD (1200+ μg) on two occasions and observing practically no effect. presumably because the state produced by the drug is a fleeting taste of the state the guru had achieved through more traditional means.
> Almost a decade ago, a Baptist Biblical scholar, a Catholic priest, several rabbis, an Islamic leader, a Zen Buddhist roshi, and more than a dozen other religious leaders walked into a lab—and took high doses of magic mushrooms.
He let us know he was okay, and everything was "cool and stuff", because the ice dogs didn't manage to catch him. He was able to run away into the woods to hide all night and eventually found his way back home in the morning. He was then curious why the ice dogs didn't chase us at all.
Maybe. I'd be scare of what happens to conservative members of religions that can go off the deep end pretty badly, primarily islam, but various cults like scientology also comes to mind.
Just a little PSA for anybody getting curious about psychedellics from this post. If you have a family history of psychosis/scizophrenia etc., don't fuck around with it.
Especially if you've tried before and you've felt paranoid (or same with weed) then really, it's just not for you.
On the other hand, if you have some psychosis in the family tree, or felt paranoid from LSD/MDMA/THC, then try out meditation, cause you might find the divine is already close to your sober mind.
100%, tried my best not to recommend it universally. Hope I haven't failed at that.
Having said that, I used to have lots of panic attacks and dissociation episodes but with cannabis. These effects went away over time and now it just gives me the sense of relaxation. Full disclaimer I have a medical prescription for cannabis use and I do regular damage reduction routines. I also don't use opioids, cocaine, tobacco or alcohol (not anymore). I used to enjoy MDMA, but I grew disinterested in it because it makes it very difficult to rest after the sessions.
So hypothesis: maybe cannabis can be used to help mitigate and treat these psychotic effects by safely exposing the user to them.
I don't know if I should share it here, but once travelling, I shared a smoke with a fellow traveller and I thought I could handle anything because I thought it was weed. It was something more than I know. I felt paranoid and felt everyone was watching me. I don't know how I was sane, but I decided to go and sleep and never will I dare touch anything so called weed.
It was probably K2/Spice. The same thing happened to me as well as a panic attack and borderline disassociation. I never touched weed, real or otherwise after that.
I highly recommend the whole book "Sacred Knowledge" by William Richards (one of the author of the studies).
“To most people who are even moderately experienced with entheogens, concepts such as awe, sacredness, eternity, grace, agape, transcendence, transfiguration, dark night of the soul, born-again, heaven and hell are more than theological ideas; they are experiences.” - Thomas Roberts
This phrase is quoted in "Sacred Knowledge" by Richards, yet I find it the most suitable summary of this overview of scientific research on psychedelics and religion.
We hear about mystical visions from LSD ("acid"), psilocybin ("shrooms"), and DMT from many "spiritual but not religious" people and self-proclaimed shamans.
But how does it relate to vision by ordinary people (ones who never tired, and wouldn't try if it weren't for legal, scientific research)?
And how does it relate to prayer, mediation, and mystical visions by Christians, Jews, Buddhists, and Hindus? How do monks and priests compare their psychedelic experience with their regular practice? Do they all turn to Zen Buddhism, or entrench in their religious background?
Regardless if you are deeply religious, or a non-spiritual atheist, I believe you will reconsider a few things after reading this book.
AS Christians we don't expect to receive mystical and transcendent visions, although they can happen it's exceedingly rare and not something the majority of people will see in their life.
Satan is far more likely to give you a mystical vision that leads you away from the faith than for you to receive a Divine vision.
I recommend reading "Sacred knowledge" even more (the author is Christian, if it makes a difference). When it comes to mystic experiences, while technically it can me "less than 50%", it is still a lot (https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2023/12/07/spiritual-ex...). Not everyone is happy to talk about it, both is it might be very personal and as many are afraid to be considered crazy.
I cannot say much about relative Bayesian probability of getting a vision from God or Satan, though.
I have taken LSD and mushrooms about a dozen times each. They’re just drugs. Drugs that mess with the way you perceive things, there’s nothing spiritual or profound about any of it. I very much enjoy hallucinogens but any ‘meaning’ or ‘spirituality’ about the experience is nonsense. I still think the experience itself has positive effects overall.
Will do, but I can't help but being sceptical of the scepticism of those that study the world from a safe distance. Maybe I'm just too sceptically trusting in my experiences and the world as I see it.
> Many of those who chose to participate were also considering leaving the profession at the outset and so could have been seeking a way to reconnect with the divine
From the study:
> 8% endorsing that they were currently considering leaving their vocation
I don't know if my brain is just wired up differently, but I've taken both LSD and Psilocybin many times and I did not find the experiences spiritual at all. I don't even know what people are talking about when they talk about spiritual experiences.
I recently talked about LSD to a spiritual person (the western esotericism kind).
He accidentally took a very high dose in his 20s and also read a bunch of books on the subject for a while, by Leary and so on. He equated it to a trip to the mirror maze, but nothing more. He doesn’t find it worth it and warns against it since for some people it lingers for too long. He is puzzled about people calling the experience „spiritual“ too.
Set and setting can make or break the experience. Alone and -> introspection or in the crowd who will drag you along them? Looking around at patterns emerging or resting with eyes firmly closed letting your mind wander far and high? What kind of soothing music is in the background? And so on.
For me and my several mushroom trips in the past (cca 1 standard dose, nothing over that but mixed with lemon which should shorten the trip while making it way more intense) all above made it extremely pleasant, very powerful with lasting effects, and also at the end of each very spiritual (while not changing me being agnostic, rather just confirming it).
Once took a milder dose without lemon, and just sat in one of Amsterdam's parcs looking around - felt almost nothing compared to other trips, and dealing with reality, traffic, cyclists etc made it less than pleasant.
Agreed. I really enjoy both acid and shrooms, but beyond appreciating the fractal beauty of trees and the patterns in carpets a bit more I wouldn't describe them as anything life-changing, let alone some kind of spiritual awakening. MDMA is similarly hyped up, but no, I never felt "connected to the mass of humanity" or whatever people talk about, I just got high and danced while gritting my teeth and rubbing on my head.
Decades ago I had the same type of what are people talking about?!, it's certainly not happening to me! surprise, regarding MDMA and the supposed wonders of dancing the night away. I felt the effects of the substance, but to me, nightclub dancing on MDMA still felt about as awkwardly-conscious, performative and unnecessary as it did without!
I suspect it's similar with the spiritual stuff, in principle. That is, if you're typically not a personality who tends towards that stuff - spiritual connections and revelations and such - then perhaps no substance will necessary make you so.
From my experience, nor MDMA nor shrums do the work for you. They only help you get there. So if you just pop the pill sit back and wait for things to happen, then it's not going to work. These things amplify your inner state (emotions, feelings, thoughts) thats why set and setting is of most importance. And here is where a good trip sitter also can come in handy.
Same. The hallucinations are fun and the laughter and joy but at the same time I can tell, even though I'm tripping, that it's just my brain mixing up its wiring and nothing to do with god.
I know people personally that psilocybin, LSD, and other substances do nothing for. All of them also have existing mental health disorders (extreme generalized anxiety, depression, bipolar, etc.).
That could be an interaction with the meds they take for those conditions, couldn't it? I seem to recall that SSRIs in particular could mitigate the effects of the hallucinogen.
Nothing as in there is no outside noticeable change in behavior and they report no change in speaking, or nothing as it relates to the topic of this thread, in that they have no profound or spiritual experiences?
it is there. in a former life ive only felt it under the spell of either of those substances mixed with others popular with today's party goers, but it is. very fleeting and hard to describe but I have the sparse memories of the feelings during the experiences and once you get there you will know and definitely remember
I think it's a mix of set and setting combined with people who have probably never taken any kind of drug aside from alcohol and maybe infrequent cannabis usage. People who take LSD "many times" usually come to it after already being able to handle themselves on some psychedelic substance, so the experience is less all-encompassing and more mundane. Some priest who's never even been contact high, sitting in a room with religious iconography and being prepped to experience something spiritual, seems likely to have a very different experience.
Lsd did it for me. Psilocybin was not spiritual at all.
For me the "spiritual exlerience" was just a profound sense of gratefulness. And then the idea that god and objective truth are one and the same. Whatever that means
are you otherwise spiritual? I think that might be a prerequisite. Outside of spirituality did you have any experiences that were "profound" or "thought provoking"?
From my point of view all experiences are more or less equally strange and profound. I would describe the experience as interesting, moderately thought provoking, but not informative about any deep human question.
From my point of view most people's "spiritual" musings are like putting a clown mask on the world.
Apparently he was so serious about the potential for LSD to help alcoholics, that he almost got thrown out of Alcoholics Anonymous, the recovery group he helped create. He had written to a Catholic friend about this.
> LSD, by mimicking insanity, could help alcoholics achieve a central tenet of the Twelve Step programme proposed by AA, he believed. It was a matter of finding "a power greater than ourselves" that "could restore us to sanity". He warned: "I don't believe [LSD] has any miraculous property of transforming spiritually and emotionally sick people into healthy ones overnight. It can set up a shining goal on the positive side, after all it is only a temporary ego-reducer."
> But Wilson added: "The vision and insights given by LSD could create a large incentive – at least in a considerable number of people."
> His words were found in a late 50s letter to Father Ed Dowling, a Catholic priest and member of an experimental group he had formed in New York to explore the spiritual potential of LSD.
Readit News
It has lasting effects that go way beyond the effects of the drug.
However I think it's complicated to derive generalisms like saying it's a drug for everyone and everybody should take it. It's definitely not for everybody.
I'm also not going to be a hypocrite and say that you shouldn't do it. What I'll go and say is that it's your journey to figure out what you are going to invite into your life. In any case, depending on what you believe, you aren't actually here to figure things out. You already did. You are here to remember.
In more secular terms, you are here to do the required work to understand yourself, your circumstances, stand on the shoulder of giants and study the great minds that came before you. That will give you the necessary foundational philosophy to withstand and understand these experiences, should you choose to go through them. This is the only way to acquire a foundational respect for these substances and these experiences.
Have I done this work? Have I achieved the required level of understanding to make heads and tails of these experiences? Not for a while at least. It was rough the first couple of times. Very violent and crude, like rushing naked through a sea of people while being completely sure that that night is the last night of your life (I wasn't actually naked, it just felt like that and that everyone was eventually going to merge with me and that I should feel ashamed of it).
But with time and with the necessary exposure to understand the basics of existencialism I think I managed to pin down a more gentle form of this experience that can help me remember how to lay myself bare to the goddess and just be there when I dance.
So I think I can extend this invitation to anyone that feels brave enough to lift the reins of existence and reality and expose yourself to the truth. That everything is a story about the end of the world. About the beginning. And about everything at once.
It's scary, it's blissful and it's totally worth it.
Ask your doctor if placebo is right for you.
Let’s not pretend it’s perfectly safe (what is?) but this is hardly ‘normal’.
...something that likely never happened (and if it did, it wasn't the LSD)
PSA: 100-150 micrograms of LSD is a medium to strong trip. For beginners its good to start low, perhaps 75 micrograms or lower.
Edit: Also testing your reaction psychedelics in more controlled and calmer settings is highly recommended before doing in it raves or other public places. But also note that the effects may vary significantly even in the same person at different times and settings.
Did you get that from a government "risk prevention" website? 100 micrograms is a base, standard dose; There's a reason that that is the most common amount to a piece of blotter paper.
A medium trip would be something like 220(also a common dose), and "strong" can go anywhere from what, 500 to 1000?(1000 and above being commonly referred to as "heroic dose" and fairly rarely taken)
I do agree that a beginner might want to try sub-100 micrograms, but you rub up against the lower border of real perceptible effects around 50.
Just to offer a counterpoint:
“I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different.” ― Kurt Vonnegut
The more I experience, the more I think maybe that's a pretty good point, too.
If you choose to fart around, whatever that means, don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Since there's no salvation, farts are also meaningless, and at the same time totally meaningful given the circumstances.
> Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you've got a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies-"God damn it, you've got to be kind."
This isn't to discount your experience but rather a general warning: all drugs aren't for everyone. It's easy to take away from these threads that psychedelics are universally positive and that negative trips are generally the result of misuse.
Which isn't true. Before going into this doing some deep introspection about yourself and your abilities is really important. Use these drugs with extreme caution.
Had one once. It was not a pleasure at all. Best I can say is that it was interesting and that I did 'experience' interesting stuff. But that has no profound effect on me, since I consider it, like a dream, to have no basis in reality.
Generic statements like this are dangerous since different people may respond VERY differently to the same substance. This can depend on long term traits like personality or short term like the current state of mind. People reading such statements might think there's no way it can go wrong. If it isn't a profound experience, they might also think there's something wrong with them, which isn't the case.
There is no special 'truth' in LSD, certainly no truths outside the self - while you can learn some things about your internal experience from it, it also repeatedly provokes in its users a false sense of the profound. People experience 'realisations' which are pure nonsense when recalled or examined later.
It makes your brain go haywire in all sorts of fun and interesting ways. But if you're looking for the meaning of life in there you're doing it wrong, and I dread to think what you might find.
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Therefore for some people it will show them their "truth", its not that lsd or mushrooms contain the truth.
This goes from very practical truths in where you see patterns of yourself that are not very useful but even more important you will see & feel the impermanence of your being & experience the world in it's totality making your impermanence a joyful feeling of being part of the world instead of being seperated from it. This is why in some studies people fear death less.
Cool. I think it's very important. I'll think really hard about philosophy when on drugs, you go do your thing ;)
> There is no special 'truth' in LSD, certainly no truths outside the self
What is the "outside of the self"? Isn't that smuggling in the assumption that there is an essential separation of the self and the rest of the world? What if everything is world? And what if everything is self? Does it make any difference?
> while you can learn some things about your internal experience from it, it also repeatedly provokes in its users a false sense of the profound
What is the correct sense of the profound and who is going to be the gatekeepers of the profound?
> People experience 'realisations' which are pure nonsense when recalled or examined later.
I have all my notes and they still make a lot of sense to me so I don't think this argument hold by experience.
> But if you're looking for the meaning of life in there you're doing it wrong, and I dread to think what you might find.
Is there a meaning to life to be found? I always thought the meaning of life is something you never stop pursuing, every day all the time. So please, tell me the right ways so I don't dread you. I'm being sarcastic in the same proportion you are being arrogant.
Ah and thanks for proving my point about the necessity of philosophy.
Cool. And good for you, but this has honestly ruined 'raves' for me.
I'm a huge fan of different types of electronic music and really, really enjoy it. The music itself is a spiritual experience and allows me to 'disolve into the Great Void'. But these days when I go to a festival or something, I'm surrounded by people I can't share this feeling/experience with, since everyone seems to be on some type of drug and either in their own world (X, LSD, etc) or think the world is in them (coke).
I recently prematurely left an artist I was really looking forward to because of exactly this. It was incredibly disappointing, though not surprising.
It's really hard to maintain a healthy state of mind when there is a dude overdosing with several paramedics trying to stabilise him. I still remember that time and it hurts me every time I think about it.
But there are smaller raves, with 50-500 people, where I think this feeling is maintained.
I'd maybe recommend avoiding what we call here "commercial raves" and go to "pvt's", private raves, which are not private, just with more modest economic goals.
But then he noticed that the results really depend on who is taking it and what their world view is. If you do not have any inclination towards that mystic space, you will not get the ego death. It is as Eckhart Tolle said "just your senses turned up to 11", that is if there is nothing else you can get out of it.
As Douglas Rushkoff said "If you give tech bros a hit of psychedelics, all you get is tech bros on psychedelics." There is no higher sense achieved.
This translates well to psychedelic drug use.
This is an amazing line. I must admit: the first time I tried LSD I had some code open on my laptop. Before the trip I was curious what programming on LSD would be like, so at some point dutifully I sat down in front of my editor. I was immediately utterly transfixed by the colours of the text cursor as it pulsed. Then I lost myself watching hover states as I moved the mouse around. Needless to say, I didn’t get any programming done.
I remember thinking how strange and hilarious it was that, while sober, I care at all about programming. It all seemed so hollow.
A lot more happened on the trip - the whole thing was incredibly profound and insightful. But all these years later, I still have a crystal clear image of that pulsing cursor etched in my memory.
In any case, this is why I think philosophy is the required work to be done so that we can invite spiritualism and mysticism into our lives and potentially experience them with these reality altering drugs.
I am as agnostic-atheist as they come and would go as far as to say I find mysticism offensive to good sense. But I've experienced the ego death parts of LSD, and consider I have come to know myself more through it. I don't think it reveals some fundamental truth outside myself so much as being simply a phenomenon of the action of psychedelics on my brain.
Frankly I think this idea that you have to be studied in philosophy or open to mystic woo-y nonsense to fully appreciate or even fully experience psychedelics is hilarious and self-aggrandising.
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In that case, I would suggest working a bit on that first. Meditation can help, but "terrified" sounds strong enough that trying out therapy if available may be worthwhile.
Regarding substances, I found mushrooms to be easier than LSD, with a kind of warmth that softens the psychedelic experience (without taking anything away from it). The effects also don't last as long. A non-psychedelic which can allow one to face difficult emotions is MDMA. In some countries you can find MDMA based therapy. This could prepare someone to become more open to what psychedelics have to offer. (Edit: Also, all of these substances have effects that are not comparable to alcohol at all. Trying to understand the effects of psychedelics/empathogens based on experiences with alcohol is a category error.)
Based on my limited experience, I would roughly categorize the relation of these substances to the idea of control like this:
LSD: you might feel like there's some control, but you're actually the playball of the substance
Mushrooms: the substance draws you in some direction, and it's best to just lean into it, but it'll support you in doing so
MDMA: there's no need for control, things are okay the way they are
> having zero belief in the mysticism
That depends on what exactly this means.
Have some knowledge of "mysticism" or some eastern worldviews / philosophy, without taking it too seriously, would be a good basis IMO.
Actively rejecting any ideas related to mysticism while clinging tightly to a specific world view / metaphysics (and related beliefs like "I can only allow something if I understand / can explain it") may lead someone to have a really bad time on psychedelics.
---
Note that this isn't advice about whether to consume anything or what to consume, and experiences can vary widely between individuals, settings, dosages etc. (For both assumptions above, is possible to construct higly positive outcomes, where the substance helped overcome problems, opens one up, etc. and negative ones, horror trip, lasting trauma from the trip, ...) Having someone experienced present when doing something like this for the first time is highly recommended.
Do you have good reason for this fear, like fantasies of hurting yourself or others? If so, yeah, you probably shouldn't ingest substances that can lower your inhibitions.
Good, belief has nothing to do with mysticism. It's about experiencing the ineffable, something beyond yourself, which is often terrifying.
2. i never have and probably never will be a spiritual person. doesn't lessen the enjoyment or impact. i literally just think of it as a "reset button" - it makes you forget some previous anxieties, reframe others, let go of stuff that's dragging you down. it's not therapy but sometimes just shaking things up a bit gives you enough of a new perspective to really benefit you. or... you know, sometimes you just watch tv with your roommates for 3 hours. whatever.
When I wake up the next day after taking it too far I'm riddled with anxiety and usually feeling sick, the whole day and maybe even the next day is ruined. And yes of course it's my responsibility to moderate my intake, it's just hard for me. The solution I've come up with is I try to never have more than 4-6 drinks in an evening.
I have experienced both myself and others saying and doing things while drunk that we never would have done or said sober. I have experienced myself and others being seriously injured solely due to alcohol.
There are other drugs that scare me the same way, particularly pills like benzos and such but I have never had a bad time with MDMA or LSD. It's much more of a "I love you man", "Everything is awesome" vibe. At least at the doses I use I'm completely lucid and in control, I'm just also having an amazing time.
Alcohol just makes me forget stuff, LSD and MDMA have given me some of the best memories of my life. I can't remember the last time I drank alcohol and woke up the next day thinking "last night was awesome". I've definitely had some good times with alcohol but the amount of bad times completely dwarfs them.
And again maybe this is all on me, maybe I just can't handle alcohol. But I'm definitely not alone.
If it wasn't for the social stigma and the fact that I generally don't want to associate with the people who supply drugs, I'd never drink alcohol again. I'd smoke weed and for special nights like festivals etc I'd use MDMA and maybe LSD.
The main thing to keep in mind if you want to try LSD is it lasts a long time. 8-12 hours, there is no off switch. Start with low doses, do half a tab or even a quarter tab. You don't need much, it's really powerful. A small dose will completely change your state of mind. If you like it, do more next time. Personally I don't really experience hallucinations, I'm completely aware, present and in control. Maybe patterns like wallpaper and leaves will seem to move and stuff like that, but aside from the dilated pupils you can't really tell I'm high. To me it's like seeing the world with new eyes, mundane things you pass by every day are suddenly interesting. Look at that beautiful tree. Look at your friends and loved ones, they're amazing. It makes me think differently, see things from a different perspective and be thankful for the things I take for granted in my daily life. It's awesome, I've done it maybe 20 times and I hope I get to experience it many more times. Just wish I could get it without buying from criminals.
The "out of body experience" ppl describe in near death always seemed to me to be a glitch of the brain's 3D perceptual space, i.e. a forced linear transform of 3D coordinates or something.
This reminded of Deep Space Nine’s Great Link. The drop becomes the ocean, and the ocean becomes a drop.
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Great_Link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUJuwNxNUWQ
Kind of suspect it'll make for a extra trippy trip. ;)
Is that what kids who are born into starvation and poverty think ? Or just white guys with money ?
I don't deserve so much, not more than these people that are starving, and yet I'm here. And I know that if I renounce everything I'll just be another starving person, albeit white.
So I enjoy my life and you won't be able to make me feel any worse than I already feel about it. But I dedicate myself to charity and to serving people whenever I can. It's important to use your privileges to care and serve. There is always someone that your abilities can help and renouncing them, renouncing your condition is a disservice to society.
Now answer me. How many people did your comment feed now? Which revolution did it fuel that will feed the masses?
It very much IS set and setting and the powers that be really want to fuck up the set. Try it. You won't regret it.
My advice has to be very careful in order not to incentivise unprepared people who would otherwise have a great trip. We have to be responsible, even if it'll only gonna negatively affect a very small percentage of them. Applied philosophy of care 100%
Other than that, I totally agree.
My advice to people who haven't tried it tends to be that if you're scared, you should abstain. Your presuppositions of what the experience will be, will in themselves shape the experience. If you expect a bad time, you're likely to get one.
There's also a group of people who are curious about using psychedelics to treat mental disorder. My advice to those people is to find a way to do it in a clinical setting. Psychedelics have enormous potential for effectively curing anxiety disorders, but it's not just a matter of taking the drugs. The experience must be guided by a psychologist who knows what the goal is. And then integrated and processed afterwards, also with expert help. Psychedelucs are not a treatment in and of themselves, more like an accelerant of psychotherapy. The therapy is still necessary, it's just that psychedelics allow you to do in a handful of sessions what could take years in a sober patient. As a case in point, I have a severe anxiety disorder myself, and my many self-initiated experiments with psychedelics haven't magically cured it. If combined with therapy, it might have. I'm still waiting for clinical practice to catch up, so I can have psychedelic therapy.
There are some interesting videos on YouTube from people experiencing this.
A friend of my brother was doing shrooms with a couple other guys, had a bad trip and actually offed himself as part of the trip.
Please don't try to convince people that all of this is completely safe.
Just because everyone in your sample size has been fine doesn't mean everyone will be or even that your group will continue to be. Contrary to simplistic thinking, the law does exist for a reason and these substances are also scheduled for reasons other than conspiracies around free thinking.
Please spend some time reading about drug induced psychosis and educate yourself of the risks.
But I agree that you don't need to take drugs. That's why my advice wasn't a definitive one. It's an invitation for people to consider what they want in their lives.
Wish you all the best truthfully.
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I then get all my insights, because my mind never stops thinking about philosophy, and I write them down. Rinse and repeat.
It has profound effects in my life. Full disclaimer, I also exercise a lot, I have a fulfilling job in tech, I go to therapy, I dedicate myself to arts, I dedicate myself to my partner and my pets (which are almost like familiars for me).
Is it placebo? Is it my lifestyle? Is it the drugs?
I just apply non-interpretation to all these things that happen in my life and I go with it.
And all you see
Is all your life
Will ever be
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https://www.altaonline.com/culture/cartoons/a42179654/weekly...
so hard to track these things down with google nowadays. Treats every word you add as an "or" like yahoo used to when google took their search market. The move from search engine to suggestion engine has been a disaster from my point of view. Hard to see how it would be more profitable.
edit: better link
Queries use less compute time to complete, saving money. Why provide quality if there's no competitor for users to escape to?
Ram Dass and his retelling of this experience contributed to my shift from psychedelics to established spiritual traditions. They had the territory mapped out thousands of years ago. Ram Dass ultimately settled as a Hindu where as I find myself drawn to Buddhism. Anatta maps nicely to experiences of ego death and I find that I can see all drugs as part of the conditioned world. If you rely on a physical substance of the conditioned world for access to the divine then you're not free yet.
I've often wondered what happened here
https://www.ramdass.org/ram-dass-gives-maharaji-the-yogi-med...
Wild. Maybe what the world needs.
One line that's been recurring between my wife and I for the past half-decade or so is that the whole planet needs a good hotboxing.
There's a small percentage ruining it for most: a few defectors when most are cooperators.
How do we identify the defectors?
What do you do if you identify defectors?
He disappeared about an hour after.
We found him a day later at his house.
He let us know he was okay, and everything was "cool and stuff", because the ice dogs didn't manage to catch him. He was able to run away into the woods to hide all night and eventually found his way back home in the morning. He was then curious why the ice dogs didn't chase us at all.
We didn't smoke Andy up anymore.
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Example: "A priest, a rabbi, and an atheist walk into a bar..."
Especially if you've tried before and you've felt paranoid (or same with weed) then really, it's just not for you.
On the other hand, if you have some psychosis in the family tree, or felt paranoid from LSD/MDMA/THC, then try out meditation, cause you might find the divine is already close to your sober mind.
Having said that, I used to have lots of panic attacks and dissociation episodes but with cannabis. These effects went away over time and now it just gives me the sense of relaxation. Full disclaimer I have a medical prescription for cannabis use and I do regular damage reduction routines. I also don't use opioids, cocaine, tobacco or alcohol (not anymore). I used to enjoy MDMA, but I grew disinterested in it because it makes it very difficult to rest after the sessions.
So hypothesis: maybe cannabis can be used to help mitigate and treat these psychotic effects by safely exposing the user to them.
“To most people who are even moderately experienced with entheogens, concepts such as awe, sacredness, eternity, grace, agape, transcendence, transfiguration, dark night of the soul, born-again, heaven and hell are more than theological ideas; they are experiences.” - Thomas Roberts
This phrase is quoted in "Sacred Knowledge" by Richards, yet I find it the most suitable summary of this overview of scientific research on psychedelics and religion.
We hear about mystical visions from LSD ("acid"), psilocybin ("shrooms"), and DMT from many "spiritual but not religious" people and self-proclaimed shamans. But how does it relate to vision by ordinary people (ones who never tired, and wouldn't try if it weren't for legal, scientific research)?
And how does it relate to prayer, mediation, and mystical visions by Christians, Jews, Buddhists, and Hindus? How do monks and priests compare their psychedelic experience with their regular practice? Do they all turn to Zen Buddhism, or entrench in their religious background?
Regardless if you are deeply religious, or a non-spiritual atheist, I believe you will reconsider a few things after reading this book.
Satan is far more likely to give you a mystical vision that leads you away from the faith than for you to receive a Divine vision.
I cannot say much about relative Bayesian probability of getting a vision from God or Satan, though.
Second, how do you define `meaning’ or `spirituality’?
The New Yorker version looks more interesting.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/05/26/this-is-your-p...
Finding willing rabbis, however, was easy—the challenge was finding ones who were “psychedelically naïve.”
> Many of those who chose to participate were also considering leaving the profession at the outset and so could have been seeking a way to reconnect with the divine
From the study:
> 8% endorsing that they were currently considering leaving their vocation
https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/psymed.2023.0044#sec-...
24 completed the study, so that's 2 people.
I stopped and read the whole thing to be disappointed.
A blurb about [thing i am interested in].
I now feel like yelling at some clouds.
He accidentally took a very high dose in his 20s and also read a bunch of books on the subject for a while, by Leary and so on. He equated it to a trip to the mirror maze, but nothing more. He doesn’t find it worth it and warns against it since for some people it lingers for too long. He is puzzled about people calling the experience „spiritual“ too.
For me and my several mushroom trips in the past (cca 1 standard dose, nothing over that but mixed with lemon which should shorten the trip while making it way more intense) all above made it extremely pleasant, very powerful with lasting effects, and also at the end of each very spiritual (while not changing me being agnostic, rather just confirming it).
Once took a milder dose without lemon, and just sat in one of Amsterdam's parcs looking around - felt almost nothing compared to other trips, and dealing with reality, traffic, cyclists etc made it less than pleasant.
I suspect it's similar with the spiritual stuff, in principle. That is, if you're typically not a personality who tends towards that stuff - spiritual connections and revelations and such - then perhaps no substance will necessary make you so.
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For me the "spiritual exlerience" was just a profound sense of gratefulness. And then the idea that god and objective truth are one and the same. Whatever that means
From my point of view most people's "spiritual" musings are like putting a clown mask on the world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_W.#Psychedelic_therapy
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-5922.13027
Apparently he was so serious about the potential for LSD to help alcoholics, that he almost got thrown out of Alcoholics Anonymous, the recovery group he helped create. He had written to a Catholic friend about this.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/aug/23/lsd-help-alc...
> LSD, by mimicking insanity, could help alcoholics achieve a central tenet of the Twelve Step programme proposed by AA, he believed. It was a matter of finding "a power greater than ourselves" that "could restore us to sanity". He warned: "I don't believe [LSD] has any miraculous property of transforming spiritually and emotionally sick people into healthy ones overnight. It can set up a shining goal on the positive side, after all it is only a temporary ego-reducer."
> But Wilson added: "The vision and insights given by LSD could create a large incentive – at least in a considerable number of people."
> His words were found in a late 50s letter to Father Ed Dowling, a Catholic priest and member of an experimental group he had formed in New York to explore the spiritual potential of LSD.